Great Ideas of the 21st Century (7 years in...)

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I had this debate with a few friends earlier and we settled on identifying things that were ideas (ie, not products) and were either completely new or somehow completely revolutionized how something works.

The couple I contributed were...

1. Gmail email threading. It's completely retarded to NOT have threaded emails. I don't know how I lived without them and I feel bad for anyone still using Outlook or w/e other email client does a poor or non-existent job of making emails into readable conversations.

2. TiVo/DVRs/OnDemand. While these are products, the idea of putting hardware and software together to produce any form of "TV on demand" has basically revolutionized how all early-adopters watch TV ... and soon enough everyone will be watching TV this way.

3. Tabbed internet browsing. Pretty self-explanatory. Makes using the WWW waaaaaay easier.

4. XML/RSS aggregators. I can follow hundreds of blogs at once without spending the better part of my morning clicking around to every website. News aggregation in general is just incredible for following events and various other things that interest me.

That's what I have... I guess it's pretty much all technology related, but your contributions don't have to be. What has changed your life in the last 7 years?

[gumpzilla]

I like Netflix a lot. Also, while they certainly didn't invent the concept, Pandora makes sitting at my computer in the lab a lot more pleasant, and it's definitely served its main purpose of turning me on to new music.

I feel like if I were more knowledgeable about the biological sciences there are some biggies lurking in there.

[Hollywade]

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What has changed your life in the last 7 years?

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1) Free porn on the internet
2) Online poker

[Kneel B4 Zod]

availability of HDTV

[gumpzilla]

Again, it's something that people have been talking about for a while, but I feel like the concept of something like the iPhone - a small electronic gadget which seems to be trying to come damn close to being the one electronic device you'll ever need - is something we'll be seeing more and more of in the years to come. That will be good.

EDIT: Oooh, a morbid answer. 9/11 level terrorism seems like a 21st century idea which has had a huge impact on my life.

[Homer]

Web-based map programs/sites and GPS have pretty much made physical maps obsolete for me. Sweet.

[oddjob]

flat screen monitor for me. amazing how cheap they are too. up until 5 months ago i was still using a big ass 20" crt monitor that cost $1500 some 8 years ago.

mp3 players.

[gumpzilla]

As a subset of my previous comment, the proliferation of cheap flash memory.

[captZEEbo]

frozen smoke not totally 21st century, but making a comeback in 21st century! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[gumpzilla]

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frozen smoke not totally 21st century, but making a comeback in 21st century! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Aerogel rules.